Gaelic games added to PE curriculum in European Schools
Laois GAA Head of Coaching and Games, Shane Keegan, pictured teaching European School PE teachers how to coach Gaelic games at a Development Day in Munich.
By John Harrington
When Charlie Jameson grew up in Edenmore in Dublin, playing hurling and football for St. Monica’s provided more than an opportunity to play sport, it gave him a sense of belonging and community.
When he then moved to Munich as a young man 25 years ago it gave him an anchor in a new community as a founding member of Munchen Colmcilles GAA club.
Through the club he met his wife, made great friends, and felt his life enriched by the ethos of volunteerism and inclusion that tends to burn extra brightly in the GAA’s international outposts.
He made it his mission to introduce as many young people in Munich to Gaelic games as he could so they too could feel the benefit of playing sports that provide a community you can belong to for life.
Charlie Jameson having some fun with young Munchen Colmcilles club-members.
To this end, with the help of his good friend Mark Ruane, he established the Munich GAA Youth Development Programme which in little over a year has exploded from a pilot initiative in a single school in Munich to a Gaelic Games Europe success story that could go very big indeed.
“Being a father myself, I wanted Gaelic games to be available for my own children as much as possible and I spent a few years trying to get Gaelic games coaching into European School Munich Secondary school,” Jameson told GAA.ie.
“Eventually another member of our club, Damian Barr, who is a geography teacher in the school, asked the Principal could we do a trial day and we finally got in.
“From that trial day we had a six-week course and half-way through it they extended it to eight weeks. We had 25 or 30 kids coming down for the first couple of weeks and that quickly grew to 50 because the kids love it so much.
“Sessions take place weekly on Tuesdays after school and the programme is already confirmed through to 2028 in the school.
“The Global Games Development Fund has been really, really helpful. They gave us €1,000 just for the European School. With that we're going to buy goal-posts and footballs so they have their own equipment set up in the school.
“The PE teachers within the school now want to do a Gaelic games foundation coaching course in Munich in September and they're getting PE teachers from other schools signed up too.
“Once you get more people trained up as coaches it will make it a lot easier and five more schools in Munich want to run the exact same programme just on the back of this so we would hope that we could have an inter-schools league potentially in time.
“We hope to host the Féile in Munich next year and the school Principal has already said they’d love to field some teams in the Féile so they’ve really gotten on board with it.
“I met the school’s Director of Sport, Dan Harcock, a couple of weeks ago because he wanted to see how far we've gone and what we wanted to next in the future and he gave us slots for coaching Gaelic games in the school until 2028. They’re also hoping to introduce it to their PE curriculum.
“Dan has been phenomenal. He wants to get his own coaching badge in Gaelic games so he can coach it himself.”
Cúl Camp participants from Munchen Colmcilles.
That positive relationship with Dan Harcock has started a domino effect that could soon see Gaelic football widely played across all the European Schools on the continent.
On Harcock’s suggestion, Jameson arranged a Development Day for European School PE teachers from across Europe which was a resounding success.
“Shane Keegan (Laois GAA Head of Coaching) came over from Ireland for the development day to help us with it,” says Jameson.
“There are 32 European Schools and I think 72 PE teachers attended and we spent the day showing them how to run Gaelic football sessions.
“They absolutely loved it and from that we’ve already gotten 11 new schools who want to do the same thing with Gaelic football in their schools that we’re doing in European School Munich.
“They’re in touch now with Chris Collins (Head of Operations with Gaelic Games Europe) to make that happen.
“Then there’s the EuroGames in 2028 which is an inter-schools competition within European Schools.
“It's being hosted in Munich in 2028 and they've already put down Gaelic football as a sport. So, all of those schools can put forward teams for a 32-team Gaelic football competition.
“The potential is absolutely enormous. We're also trying to link up those schools to GAA clubs if they have one close to them.”
Mixed training sessions with mothers and daughters has proven to be a great community as well as sporting endeavour for Munchen Colmcilles.
Jameson hopes that Munchen Colmcilles, already a very vibrant club, will grow their membership considerably in the coming years thanks to number of children now being exposed to Gaelic games at school.
Next on his to do list is to bring Gaelic football to European School Munich Primary which has close to 1,000 pupils.
“With the help of a PE teacher there who’s originally from Mayo and an LGFA player, we’ll be running 90-minute weekly sessions,” he says.
“The school has also expressed a strong interest in embedding Gaelic games into their school curriculum.
“There are also discussions ongoing with three other International Schools that range in size from approximately 800 to 1,400 pupils across primary and secondary levels.
“The plan is to roll out a six-week Introduction to Gaelic Games programme in each school and create a clear pathway from school participation into sustained club involvement.”
Munchen Colmcilles are making a big effort to grow their youth participation.
In his wildest dreams Jameson never imagined that the Munich GAA Youth Development Programme would be such an overnight success.
What he has seen has convinced him that Gaelic football can quickly become a sport of mass participation in Europe if children are exposed to it through a school’s PE curriculum.
“I don't know where it's going to go or how it's going to progress but at the moment everything seems to be firing on all cylinders, they all seem to be jumping in board,” he says.
“The PE teachers are the key. Once we have them doing it then it will be embedded in the school and become a long-term thing.
“I sat down in October and I wrote up a five-year plan for this, where I wanted to go with it and where I thought it could go. I wrote down 10 targets but I've already hit eight of them so it's already time to reassess and start again.
“I think this could grow very quickly. Kids Gaelic games in Europe in general is spreading really quickly thanks to Pearse Bell, the Youth Officer for Gaelic Games Europe, who is doing great work
“You just have to look at Brittany and Galicia to see how quickly it's spreading and that’s largely down to coaching the games in schools there so there’s the potential for it to grow the same way in Germany and other countries.
“I referee matches all across Europe and you could be refereeing a team from Italy and they're all speaking to each other in Italian or you go referee in France and they're all speaking French.
“It's local kids learning these games and they're loving it and they'll then pass it on to their friends and family.”